Hello Timbers fans!
As you can see, this site has undergone a major redesign for the 2012 Timbers season. I will introduce you to some of the new features in a second, but first a word about last year’s site.
Last year I had the great idea of converting the site from manually-edited HTML to a content management system. Yes, through the 2010 season, everything done on this site was manually coded. But the time had come to convert to something easier to maintain, and would allow for integrating things like RSS, could add more bells and whistles to the site. Not knowing the difference between content management systems at the time, I choose Joomla, and it was a big mistake. The modules broke all the time, articles disappeared from the archives for no reason, and it was a disaster that I just had to nurse through the year until I decided to re-do the site again in the off-season.
Taking advice from a few friends I knew and trusted, I went with WordPress, and it’s been exactly what I’ve been looking for, and finally the site has the look and feel and functionality I’ve been looking for. As with the previous sites, I’ve coded the schedule right onto the front page and will continue to add links to the match reports right in the schedule, but I think the look is cleaner, I have more control over the articles, and still have the benefit of being able to provide an RSS feed and have many of the bells and whistles of a CMS site.
Here are some of the new features of the new SoccerCityUSA.com. Many of these are common on websites and blogs these days, but just wanted you to be aware of them:
- The Timbers MLS, U23, and Reserves now have their own “pages” by clicking the menu choices at the top of the page. You can access News, Match Reports, and Photo Galleries for each team through that menu.
- Commenting is now available on all stories posted.
- A new links section has been added, including all of the known Facebook pages for the supporters groups.
- All three schedules are now available on the front page.
- Navigation buttons now show on the bottom right of each page, plus icons for printing, an RSS feed for the comments, and a trackback URL.
- The search tool is better than on the old site.
- Archives are available on the bottom of the front page.
- Navigation “bread crumbs” at the top of each page.
- You can now navigate to the next (or previous story) from each article. Links at the top right and top left of the article.
- More options for embedding video and audio in the stories.
- A mobile version is much more usable than the old site.
Other features that are coming soon:
- The extensive stats page that was on the old USL version of this site was never properly converted for MLS. That stats page will be up and running by the beginning of the 2012 regular season.
- The author of this site has some new video ideas for 2012 that should be an interesting addition to the site.
I hope you like the new site, and if you have any suggestions or recommendations, you can always contact me at the address below:
Allison Andrews
February, 2012
